One feature that is perennially requested is “We need to export to Excel” this is a feature smell, similar to a code smell.

Ask yourself?

  • Why are your users exporting to Excel?

  • What are they doing in Excel that they can’t do in your app?

  • If there are reports or charts that aren’t available in your app add them.

Exporting to Excel is a horrible idea because once the data is out of your system it’s immediately out of date and stands a real possibility of being wrong.